Buzz on software entrepreneurship

“We’re living in the ‘anyone can play guitar’ era of software entrepreneurship. Because of the confluence of increasingly accessible developer tools and the Internet, it’s now reasonable to think that one or two talented people, with little to no investment, can make anything from a good living to a fortune by bringing their idea to life. What kills me about the outmoded Silicon Valley gold rush mentality that I feel has entered the Mac developer community for the first time because of the iPhone is how much it fundamentally ignores the significance of Apple’s App Store as a field leveler.”

Although I was at first disappointed that I had no time (either at VitalSource or for my own projects) to have an iPhone app at launch, as the weeks and months pass since the App Store opened I find myself less and less sure about what the App Store market actually looks like. Everything is changing very quickly. While there is no doubt a huge opportunity in iPhone development — and with another 30-40 million iPhones hitting next year, each of those new customers will have their own impulse buys and novelty purchases, to say nothing of the real apps that people need on their phone — at the same time I wonder when iPhone development will be as mature and stable as the Mac software market is.

This isn’t a direct comment on what Buzz is saying. His blog and comments on “Mike’s post”:http://www.atomicwang.org/motherfucker/Index/832D1CF5-BDF8-493D-945A-E95105682EDC.html are right-on as usual.